Living on the edge of eternity
Commentary
We in the industrialized west of the twenty-first century have achieved a remarkable security. Consider the biggest questions most of us will be facing as the year draws to a close: How has my mutual fund performed this year? Will the Cowboys make it to the Super Bowl? What will I get Aunt Sue for Christmas?
That may be something of an exaggeration -- not all the questions of our lives are trivial -- but we really are quite comfortable and safe. We have built financial walls around ourselves, individually and corporately, so that even the poor can get help -- perhaps minimal -- from a system of public welfare. We don't have to go out to kill our food or gather nuts and berries; we can drive to the local Safeway. Our houses protect us from the elements. The police will protect us from crime. And if we get sick, we know that medical science will perform its miracles.
Bolstering all of that is a system of insurance so that if the unthinkable happens -- somebody runs a red light, say, and plows into us -- we know we'll be able to repair the car and pay the hospital and the doctor for setting the broken arm. There is even insurance that will protect us from so-called acts of God -- tornadoes, damaging winds and the like.
That is not just a cynical view on the superficiality of American life, or a criticism of our culture. On the contrary, it is testimony to the fact that human society has managed to build walls against the raging chaos of the cosmos, walls around ourselves.
But things are never as secure as we would like to think. The financial gains of the 1990s are lost, and former dot-com millionaires now declare bankruptcy to protect themselves from their creditors. Yes, we can pay the doctor bills after the heart attack; but it may be our next of kin who is signing the papers. AIDS used to be a disease out there that happened to those other people; no longer. And then of course, in these postmodern, post-Cold War days, there are still hydrogen bombs poised on the tops of missiles.
Human beings, like all the creatures on earth are always on the edge, on the edge of life and death and eternity. Life is radically contingent. We live never knowing what life will hold for us, never knowing if today will bring salvation or destruction.
And then we hear the Advent message of yet one more intrusion into the ordinary events of the day, into our comfortable, stable lives: God is coming. We have just bare inklings of what that really means and what it portends. In the face of that message, what insurance can we buy?
Isaiah 2:1-5
Prophecy in the Old Testament moves between the two poles of pronouncing judgment for wicked practices and proclaiming a promise of something new and hopeful. The reading from Isaiah combines the two: it offers the promise of God for peace, yet the content of that promise includes God's judgment upon the nations. Isaiah prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah, while the northern kingdom of Israel was facing disaster. The reading is identical to Micah 4:1-4, which could mean a) that there was a common source available to both Micah and Isaiah, b) that one of the two prophets had the other before him, or c) that the words were added later. The duplication, however it was wrought, lends a greater importance to the words.
The image and metaphor of the mountain is crucial. Over and over in the Bible a mountain is the dwelling place of God, the place where people can go to meet God. Often, perhaps generally, the metaphor suggests separation, that God is remote and inaccessible, away from human beings. Here, however, it is the reverse of that. The mountain of God will be lifted up as the highest mountain, in order that people can see it and go to it. Indeed, there will be a veritable stream of people flowing there. Verse 2 points out, with a distinct universalism, that "all the nations" shall go to the mountain. Even though these prophetic words are for Judah, the promise is one for all nations.
In that, God's statement to Abraham can see fulfillment, that in him "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). In some sense, Zion, the mountain of God and the City of God, is to be the means by which all nations will have peace. Indeed, says verse 3, people will want to go to God's mountain for the instruction that will come forth. Implied in this is that nations and peoples will realize that in Yahweh and in Yahweh's instruction is to be found the path to true peace. No more fighting, no more war, and God is the reason.
That path to peace is stated plainly in verse 4: God's judgment between the nations and God's arbitration. We submit our argument, our fighting, our disagreement -- we submit ourselves -- to God, who will then make the judgment. Of course, when Isaiah was prophesying what was needed above all was God's arbitration, specifically, between Assyria and Israel. But nothing is ever one-sided or even two-sided: all nations need God's judgment and God's arbitration, and it hasn't changed in thousands of years. Will Israel ever be at peace with her neighbors? Yes, if both sides can submit to God. And because of God's instruction and judgment and arbitration, the world would see the famous conversion of implements of war to implements of agriculture. And no longer would the art of war be studied, but the art of peace.
This is about the advent of God's peace. And it comes, always, at God's initiative. It is God's doing, offered to all without reservation. And what is the proper response to the offer? Here we see the key word in this reading. It is "come." Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. And for Christians, the light is to be found in the one who came to make the same offer that Isaiah proclaimed. Only this time, the offer would be made in person.
Romans 13:11-14
This passage is almost a parenthetical comment, but sometimes what's in parentheses is more important than anything else. Paul has been speaking to the Roman church about how a Christian should behave in matters of the state's authority. Pay your taxes, he says, and give respect and honor where they are due. He moves on from there to paying other debts. And then, in that strange Pauline stream of consciousness, the topic becomes how love fulfills the law. Our lection then begins with "Besides this...." So all of what follows is yet another reason for behaving and living as Paul describes, and it has to do with the last things.
And we again come face-to-face with a fact that governs much of New Testament interpretation: the writers' expectation of the imminent return of Jesus. If Jesus was coming again within their lifetime, then that would certainly have an immediate impact on how the early Christians lived. And that is precisely what Paul exploits here. Given that this is the moment of salvation, the coming of the day after the night, he says, you might just as well live as if the day was fully here already, wearing the armor of light, living honorably. The definition of living honorably is made plain in verse 13. He presses the point even further, calling the readers to "put on" Jesus Christ, as the armor mentioned in verse 12. The implication is that that particular armor will protect the Romans, even against the needs of the flesh, for which they are to make no provision. This putting off of the fleshly desires is not unique to Romans; in 1 Corinthians Paul advises believers they should remain unmarried, since Christ would soon return, but that they should marry if they couldn't abstain from the desires of the flesh.
The question in this reading is: Given that Christ's second coming may not be as imminent as Paul thought, what does it all mean for a church that has waited 2,000 years? Is there some sense in which we can say that "the day is near"? If so, how is Jesus' return imminent? Do we spiritualize and individualize the second coming, making it some kind of cerebro-spiritual event that happens within each Christian's own consciousness? Hard questions, without very satisfactory answers.
In the face of the hard questions, what can we affirm? We affirm that Christ has come, and will come again, and in some way comes to each of us. The advent -- the coming -- of Jesus Christ refers to all three. As it turns out, the 2,000-year gap makes no difference. The call from Paul to the Romans, and to us, and to Christians millennia hence, is to be ready for the Christ, to prepare for the coming, by living in the light of Christ, living as if it has already happened. Which, come to think of it, it has.
Matthew 24:36-44
Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew's Gospel are presented as one long discourse of Jesus on the eschaton, in response to the disciples' question, in 24:3, about when the temple would be destroyed. That question is the set-up for Jesus to enter upon the fifth great discourse in Matthew, on the end of the age. The discourse includes material from the sayings source "Q", Markan material, and material unique to Matthew.
Throughout Advent we must remember that the word means "coming" or "arrival." Unfortunately, we tend to equate the coming of Christ with the coming of Christmas, and so one expects to jump headlong into it on the first Sunday of Advent, reading verses early in the gospel. That is certainly in keeping with the culture, in which the coming of Christmas -- not Christmas itself -- is celebrated by stores selling and people buying. But we need to hang on to the meaning of Advent, and so we speak of the first coming, when Jesus was born of Mary, and the second, when he will come again to the world. And our observance of the season should refer to both the first coming and the second coming. Both comings are unexpected. Both are surprises.
The point of the passage is clear and succinct. No one knows when the Son of Man will come again. The point is made several times over, reiterated to reinforce the cluelessness of all but the Father:
* the angels don't know,
* the Son doesn't know,
* people will be as ignorant as those in the time of Noah,
* the people in the field won't know,
* the women grinding meal won't know,
* we are as ignorant as the owner of the house a thief had entered.
Jesus gets the point across very well. Only God knows, and God's not telling.
But there is even more to it, because the main issue is not that the people don't know; even Jesus himself is in that category. No, the ultimate issue is that they aren't prepared. That was the case of the people of Noah's time, of the people in the field and those grinding meal, and of the homeowner. They are not watchful and ready. Business as usual will be the theme of that day, just as every other day, with buying and selling, sewing and reaping, birthing and marrying and burying and everything in between.
Verses 40-41 are offered as evidence of the rapture, the belief that people will literally be lifted from the planet's surface at the beginning of the last days. Here, as with all eschatological writing in the Bible, we need to be careful in its interpretation, particularly the urge to translate apocalyptic statements into actual predictions of what will happen, or trying to find historical analogues to all of the pieces of a vision.
So it is a call to readiness when the Christ intrudes into the day-to-day lives, the comfortable and satisfied lives, of people. But what does that readiness consist of? And how can we be ready for what we don't even understand?
Lest we think there is some particular thing we can do to be ready, there isn't. Rather, what we hear is a call to a particular kind of life, a life of readiness and watchfulness. Interestingly, the answer to the question posed in the gospel is to be found in both the prophet and the epistle. Walking in the light of God, putting on the armor of light, both mean living a life of relationship with God. That is our only preparation for the time when God intrudes again.
Application
Much of the time, we don't think of ourselves as living on the edge of anything. Most of us live confidently, with a sense of safety and the assurance that we can handle, perhaps with help from paid professionals, just about anything that comes along. Oh sure, there may be a time of financial hardship, or there may be a few days in the hospital, but we'll be okay in the end. Our assurance extends to just about everything in life. We can probably face life, we can probably face death, we can probably face disability and disease. This sense of invulnerability, which we often attribute to the young, especially to teenaged drivers, is a part of all of us.
The word for this, of course, is complacency, something Jesus fought and preached against. In previous times the word was tossed at people too carelessly and too accusingly, but there is truth in it for all of us. And it has less to do with the self-satisfaction and smugness of particular people, than with the human condition and the human impulse, in which we are always seeking our own security and certainty. We have to hold on to the illusion of safety, or otherwise we would surely go mad, facing the vastness of eternity. The poet Robert Browning described complacency best when he said, "God's in his heaven -- All's right with the world!" Yet God may not always remain safely tucked away in heaven, and that's what Advent is all about.
It takes something drastic to remind us that we are mortal, that we are vulnerable, and that we are, after all, creatures and not creators, living on the edge of eternity. It could be the phone call late at night that rouses you out of a deep sleep, with the words, "I'm afraid there's been an accident...." It could be the doctor walking into the examination room with a furrowed brow, and saying, "I'm sorry, but it's malignant...." It could be when the boss says to you, "I'm sorry, there have been orders from the main office to cut back. We have to make some lay offs...." Or it could be God's intrusion into our comfortable and happy world.
In Matthew Jesus makes the point: "you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." We will never know when, we will never know how. We are not privy to the workings of God's plan or of God's time. The simple fact is that despite Christ's directive to prepare, we can never really be ready. Christ's coming will always be an intrusion into the ordinary things of life, the comfortable and safe things that we have gathered around us. What kind of preparation could we possibly undertake?
Isaiah and Paul both offer answers. Indeed, it is the same answer. "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!" When we are at the edge of something earthshaking, when the day of the Lord is upon us, we can already walk in God's light, even though Mount Zion is not altogether lifted up, and even though all of the nations of the world are not yet streaming to the mountain of the Lord.
In the Romans reading, Paul refers to putting "on the armor of light," remarkably similar to Isaiah's "walking in the light of the Lord." What it is really all about is living the life of Christ, living honorably, to use Paul's words. The preparation we must undertake is to live precisely that life that Christ has already called us to, to refocus our efforts, to recommit our lives.
In the Chronicles of Narnia, the good beavers are telling the children about the Christ-figure Aslan, that he is a lion and that few people can appear before him without their knees knocking. "Then he isn't safe?" asked Lucy. "Who said anything about safe?" was the response, " 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good" (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chapter 8). Safety is not what Christ comes bringing. In fact, he threatens our complacency, the sense of safety that we cling to so tightly.
Advent is a reminder that we are creatures living on the edge, that life is radically contingent, that there are vast changes and upheavals in the fabric of life and the universe. The ordinary things of life will be transformed.
Christ is coming. He may not be completely safe. But he is good.
Alternative Applications
1) Isaiah: The Advent of God's Peace: On March 26, 1979, on the lawn of the White House, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin signed the treaty of peace between Israel and Egypt. In the comments of each of those leaders, we heard the words from Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." It was an impressive and stirring moment as three religions and three nations quoted an expression of the human quest of all the millennia -- peace. But were they proposing a peace process, or a vision of the future?
The truth is that peace for Isaiah could only come about from God's hand, through our reliance on God and through our humbly submitting ourselves to God. Ultimate peace doesn't come about through disarmament, through reshaping weapons into farm implements, however noble and desirable that might be.
2) Isaiah: God's Desire for All Nations: Isaiah's vision of the age to come is a vision not just for Israel or Judah. All nations will be traveling to the mountain of God, to hear God's word and to receive God's instruction in the art of peace. No single nation or people has a private claim to God's goodness and largesse. It is for all, and all are summoned to the mountain. That same inclusiveness is the spirit of Advent -- that Christ comes not for just the few, not just for Presbyterians or Baptists or for any denomination at all.
God always seeks to expand what's included in the designation "God's people." And when Isaiah's vision comes to pass, God's people will be of all nations.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
Isaiah 2:1-5
"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains...." That prophecy is to be understood not so much in geographical terms as in terms of rank of importance. "In the latter days," in that indeterminate time in the future when God establishes his kingdom on earth, Jerusalem, situated on the mount of Zion, will be the most important place in the world. But why Jerusalem? Surely Washington, D.C., or Rome, Beijing or even Paris or Tokyo are more important than that ancient place we call the Holy City.
Jerusalem has a long history, of course. It was there that King David established his capital, binding together the traditionally divided tribes of northern and southern Israel. It was there that Solomon built the temple, with God invisibly enthroned above the outspread wings of the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. It was in Jerusalem that God promised to dwell forever in the midst of his covenant people, after he gathered them from their exile (Ezekiel 37:26-28). And yes, it was there in Jerusalem that God crowned Jesus Christ on his cross as King and Lord over all (according to the Gospels of Mark and John).
In other words, Jerusalem is not important in itself. It is important because of its connection with Almighty God, who chose to reveal himself to human beings most fully in the events that took place in that Holy City. And still, to know the one true God, it is necessary to know him through those events.
It is no wonder that in our day, there is such a struggle between Muslims and Jews in Palestine for control of Jerusalem. There the faithful believe they can approach the sanctuary of God. There Jews still can still pray at the Wailing Wall of the temple. There Muslims can still bow at the Temple Mount. And Christians can still make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, to feel in their bones the stories recounted for us in the New Testament. Human beings, through all the ages, have fought and died to seek and to know God, for apart from God, there really is no peace or meaning to human life, is there? And we desperately want to find those.
The scriptures affirm for us throughout their pages that beyond this world of struggle and turmoil, of suffering and death, there is another world called the kingdom of God, which already exists in God's heaven. And the promise of the scriptures, on which we rely in the Lord's Prayer, is that God will establish that kingdom on earth in his good time. Consequently, in our text for the morning, the eighth century B.C. prophet, Isaiah of Jerusalem, whose words are contained for us in Isaiah, chapters 1-39, lifts our eyes beyond our present struggles to see that kingdom come, as it already is in heaven.
Isaiah's is a universal vision. The good life of the kingdom, he says, will not be given just to Jews or to Muslims, to Christians or Buddhists or Hindus or anyone else (cf. Luke 13:29-30). No, proclaims Isaiah, in God's coming kingdom, every people will say in so many words, "Come, let us seek the one true God." They will invite their friends and neighbors to go with them, because they will want everyone they know to learn God's will and to walk according to his paths. They will hunger for the Word of God, because they will want to pattern their lives according to it.
That's quite a dream, isn't it, to imagine that there will come a time when every person on earth will want to do God's will instead of his or her own? When self-rule and selfish desires are a thing of the past? When no one will seek just his or her own welfare, or the good of his own country, but the good of all? When human pride and greed, power and anxiety are things of the past? But that's part of the vision of the kingdom of God that the Bible portrays for us throughout its pages -- God the Ruler over all and all persons eager for his loving rule, hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which belongs to the Lord alone. Is that what we yearn for, in this time of ours? Goodness, right living, wholeness, fullness of life?
Our text is sure that to establish such a world, God will also do some judging. Everything will be measured according to the Torah, that is, the law, the teaching of the Lord, proclaims Isaiah. That is, everything will be judged according to the measure of the order that God wishes to establish in human life. That's what torah means in our passage -- God's order. But God's judgment will be so fair, so right, so merciful, that all of warring humanity's strife will be stilled, and every nation will agree with his judgment. Out of swords, peoples throughout the world will make plowshares to till the land and to feed their populations. Out of spears, they will fashion implements with which to prune their vineyards. No nation will want to go to war any more. They will not pile up armaments or impoverish their people in order to support vast military establishments. Instead, God's righteous decisions will be accepted by all, and every nation will pattern its life according to those decisions. A passage in Micah 4:1-4 parallels this Isaiah text, and it adds a lovely picture. It says, "... they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,/and none shall make them afraid,/for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Micah 4:4).
Every year on the First Sunday in Advent, we in the church always look in two directions. We look back once more to the birth of our Savior Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea. But we also look forward to his second coming, when he will return as Lord over all to establish his kingdom throughout the earth. And the nature of that coming kingdom is at least partly described for us here in our text from Isaiah. It will be a time when all peoples will seek and know the one true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be a universal time of peace, when the turmoil of hatred and war no longer resounds throughout the lands, and so a time when no person will have to be afraid of violence. It will be a time of order, when God's good rule alone will determine relationships among human beings and with the natural world. It will be a good time, a righteous time, a time of wholeness and of abundant life. The Lord God is steadily working toward that time. And he asks each one of us to join him in that work.
PREACHING THE PSALM
Psalm 122
This psalm is one of the Songs of Ascent that pilgrims sang as they climbed the hill of Zion toward Jerusalem and the temple. The song is to express their gladness at arriving at the goal of the pilgrimage, the site of the throne of God. Jerusalem is praised as the place of refuge (v. 3, 7), a place of praise (v. 4), a place of justice (v. 5), and a place of peace (v. 7). Some preaching possibilities:
1) Here's an Advent link: Verse 2 talks of the gates of the city and verse 7 mentions the walls. These are the structures of the Holy City that symbolized for the people the hoped-for unity of the tribes and families of Israel. Within the city was the throne of David, and it was he who made the city the national capital. From his line, the "thrones of David" (v. 5), a messiah was expected who would make the symbolic unity of Israel a living reality. Thus Psalm 122 can point us toward the messianic age, and the kingdom where all peoples of earth, not merely of Israel are invited to unite.
2) The pilgrims are called to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (v. 6). Peace is more than the absence of war. It includes soundness and wholeness and well-being. The term "shalom" (which means peace) is for the psalmist a part of the very name of the Holy City. When he talks about the walls and towers of Jerusalem, he uses human language to convey divine content. In the old covenant, it was in the stone and mortar of Jerusalem that God became manifest among his people. In the new covenant, Jesus Christ is the living presence of God in our midst. Thus, we need to pray for peace within the church. Our churches and sanctuaries exist not only for our sakes, but for God's sake. What sort of specific situations in the church need our prayers for peace?
3) The pilgrims rejoiced over Jerusalem but Jesus, in Luke 19:42, wept over it. Its residence missed the opportunity for spiritual peace. Jesus is the living temple of God who supersedes Jerusalem and our churches. Our task is to tell the world that our hope, our peace, our fulfillment, is found in him.
That may be something of an exaggeration -- not all the questions of our lives are trivial -- but we really are quite comfortable and safe. We have built financial walls around ourselves, individually and corporately, so that even the poor can get help -- perhaps minimal -- from a system of public welfare. We don't have to go out to kill our food or gather nuts and berries; we can drive to the local Safeway. Our houses protect us from the elements. The police will protect us from crime. And if we get sick, we know that medical science will perform its miracles.
Bolstering all of that is a system of insurance so that if the unthinkable happens -- somebody runs a red light, say, and plows into us -- we know we'll be able to repair the car and pay the hospital and the doctor for setting the broken arm. There is even insurance that will protect us from so-called acts of God -- tornadoes, damaging winds and the like.
That is not just a cynical view on the superficiality of American life, or a criticism of our culture. On the contrary, it is testimony to the fact that human society has managed to build walls against the raging chaos of the cosmos, walls around ourselves.
But things are never as secure as we would like to think. The financial gains of the 1990s are lost, and former dot-com millionaires now declare bankruptcy to protect themselves from their creditors. Yes, we can pay the doctor bills after the heart attack; but it may be our next of kin who is signing the papers. AIDS used to be a disease out there that happened to those other people; no longer. And then of course, in these postmodern, post-Cold War days, there are still hydrogen bombs poised on the tops of missiles.
Human beings, like all the creatures on earth are always on the edge, on the edge of life and death and eternity. Life is radically contingent. We live never knowing what life will hold for us, never knowing if today will bring salvation or destruction.
And then we hear the Advent message of yet one more intrusion into the ordinary events of the day, into our comfortable, stable lives: God is coming. We have just bare inklings of what that really means and what it portends. In the face of that message, what insurance can we buy?
Isaiah 2:1-5
Prophecy in the Old Testament moves between the two poles of pronouncing judgment for wicked practices and proclaiming a promise of something new and hopeful. The reading from Isaiah combines the two: it offers the promise of God for peace, yet the content of that promise includes God's judgment upon the nations. Isaiah prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah, while the northern kingdom of Israel was facing disaster. The reading is identical to Micah 4:1-4, which could mean a) that there was a common source available to both Micah and Isaiah, b) that one of the two prophets had the other before him, or c) that the words were added later. The duplication, however it was wrought, lends a greater importance to the words.
The image and metaphor of the mountain is crucial. Over and over in the Bible a mountain is the dwelling place of God, the place where people can go to meet God. Often, perhaps generally, the metaphor suggests separation, that God is remote and inaccessible, away from human beings. Here, however, it is the reverse of that. The mountain of God will be lifted up as the highest mountain, in order that people can see it and go to it. Indeed, there will be a veritable stream of people flowing there. Verse 2 points out, with a distinct universalism, that "all the nations" shall go to the mountain. Even though these prophetic words are for Judah, the promise is one for all nations.
In that, God's statement to Abraham can see fulfillment, that in him "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). In some sense, Zion, the mountain of God and the City of God, is to be the means by which all nations will have peace. Indeed, says verse 3, people will want to go to God's mountain for the instruction that will come forth. Implied in this is that nations and peoples will realize that in Yahweh and in Yahweh's instruction is to be found the path to true peace. No more fighting, no more war, and God is the reason.
That path to peace is stated plainly in verse 4: God's judgment between the nations and God's arbitration. We submit our argument, our fighting, our disagreement -- we submit ourselves -- to God, who will then make the judgment. Of course, when Isaiah was prophesying what was needed above all was God's arbitration, specifically, between Assyria and Israel. But nothing is ever one-sided or even two-sided: all nations need God's judgment and God's arbitration, and it hasn't changed in thousands of years. Will Israel ever be at peace with her neighbors? Yes, if both sides can submit to God. And because of God's instruction and judgment and arbitration, the world would see the famous conversion of implements of war to implements of agriculture. And no longer would the art of war be studied, but the art of peace.
This is about the advent of God's peace. And it comes, always, at God's initiative. It is God's doing, offered to all without reservation. And what is the proper response to the offer? Here we see the key word in this reading. It is "come." Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. And for Christians, the light is to be found in the one who came to make the same offer that Isaiah proclaimed. Only this time, the offer would be made in person.
Romans 13:11-14
This passage is almost a parenthetical comment, but sometimes what's in parentheses is more important than anything else. Paul has been speaking to the Roman church about how a Christian should behave in matters of the state's authority. Pay your taxes, he says, and give respect and honor where they are due. He moves on from there to paying other debts. And then, in that strange Pauline stream of consciousness, the topic becomes how love fulfills the law. Our lection then begins with "Besides this...." So all of what follows is yet another reason for behaving and living as Paul describes, and it has to do with the last things.
And we again come face-to-face with a fact that governs much of New Testament interpretation: the writers' expectation of the imminent return of Jesus. If Jesus was coming again within their lifetime, then that would certainly have an immediate impact on how the early Christians lived. And that is precisely what Paul exploits here. Given that this is the moment of salvation, the coming of the day after the night, he says, you might just as well live as if the day was fully here already, wearing the armor of light, living honorably. The definition of living honorably is made plain in verse 13. He presses the point even further, calling the readers to "put on" Jesus Christ, as the armor mentioned in verse 12. The implication is that that particular armor will protect the Romans, even against the needs of the flesh, for which they are to make no provision. This putting off of the fleshly desires is not unique to Romans; in 1 Corinthians Paul advises believers they should remain unmarried, since Christ would soon return, but that they should marry if they couldn't abstain from the desires of the flesh.
The question in this reading is: Given that Christ's second coming may not be as imminent as Paul thought, what does it all mean for a church that has waited 2,000 years? Is there some sense in which we can say that "the day is near"? If so, how is Jesus' return imminent? Do we spiritualize and individualize the second coming, making it some kind of cerebro-spiritual event that happens within each Christian's own consciousness? Hard questions, without very satisfactory answers.
In the face of the hard questions, what can we affirm? We affirm that Christ has come, and will come again, and in some way comes to each of us. The advent -- the coming -- of Jesus Christ refers to all three. As it turns out, the 2,000-year gap makes no difference. The call from Paul to the Romans, and to us, and to Christians millennia hence, is to be ready for the Christ, to prepare for the coming, by living in the light of Christ, living as if it has already happened. Which, come to think of it, it has.
Matthew 24:36-44
Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew's Gospel are presented as one long discourse of Jesus on the eschaton, in response to the disciples' question, in 24:3, about when the temple would be destroyed. That question is the set-up for Jesus to enter upon the fifth great discourse in Matthew, on the end of the age. The discourse includes material from the sayings source "Q", Markan material, and material unique to Matthew.
Throughout Advent we must remember that the word means "coming" or "arrival." Unfortunately, we tend to equate the coming of Christ with the coming of Christmas, and so one expects to jump headlong into it on the first Sunday of Advent, reading verses early in the gospel. That is certainly in keeping with the culture, in which the coming of Christmas -- not Christmas itself -- is celebrated by stores selling and people buying. But we need to hang on to the meaning of Advent, and so we speak of the first coming, when Jesus was born of Mary, and the second, when he will come again to the world. And our observance of the season should refer to both the first coming and the second coming. Both comings are unexpected. Both are surprises.
The point of the passage is clear and succinct. No one knows when the Son of Man will come again. The point is made several times over, reiterated to reinforce the cluelessness of all but the Father:
* the angels don't know,
* the Son doesn't know,
* people will be as ignorant as those in the time of Noah,
* the people in the field won't know,
* the women grinding meal won't know,
* we are as ignorant as the owner of the house a thief had entered.
Jesus gets the point across very well. Only God knows, and God's not telling.
But there is even more to it, because the main issue is not that the people don't know; even Jesus himself is in that category. No, the ultimate issue is that they aren't prepared. That was the case of the people of Noah's time, of the people in the field and those grinding meal, and of the homeowner. They are not watchful and ready. Business as usual will be the theme of that day, just as every other day, with buying and selling, sewing and reaping, birthing and marrying and burying and everything in between.
Verses 40-41 are offered as evidence of the rapture, the belief that people will literally be lifted from the planet's surface at the beginning of the last days. Here, as with all eschatological writing in the Bible, we need to be careful in its interpretation, particularly the urge to translate apocalyptic statements into actual predictions of what will happen, or trying to find historical analogues to all of the pieces of a vision.
So it is a call to readiness when the Christ intrudes into the day-to-day lives, the comfortable and satisfied lives, of people. But what does that readiness consist of? And how can we be ready for what we don't even understand?
Lest we think there is some particular thing we can do to be ready, there isn't. Rather, what we hear is a call to a particular kind of life, a life of readiness and watchfulness. Interestingly, the answer to the question posed in the gospel is to be found in both the prophet and the epistle. Walking in the light of God, putting on the armor of light, both mean living a life of relationship with God. That is our only preparation for the time when God intrudes again.
Application
Much of the time, we don't think of ourselves as living on the edge of anything. Most of us live confidently, with a sense of safety and the assurance that we can handle, perhaps with help from paid professionals, just about anything that comes along. Oh sure, there may be a time of financial hardship, or there may be a few days in the hospital, but we'll be okay in the end. Our assurance extends to just about everything in life. We can probably face life, we can probably face death, we can probably face disability and disease. This sense of invulnerability, which we often attribute to the young, especially to teenaged drivers, is a part of all of us.
The word for this, of course, is complacency, something Jesus fought and preached against. In previous times the word was tossed at people too carelessly and too accusingly, but there is truth in it for all of us. And it has less to do with the self-satisfaction and smugness of particular people, than with the human condition and the human impulse, in which we are always seeking our own security and certainty. We have to hold on to the illusion of safety, or otherwise we would surely go mad, facing the vastness of eternity. The poet Robert Browning described complacency best when he said, "God's in his heaven -- All's right with the world!" Yet God may not always remain safely tucked away in heaven, and that's what Advent is all about.
It takes something drastic to remind us that we are mortal, that we are vulnerable, and that we are, after all, creatures and not creators, living on the edge of eternity. It could be the phone call late at night that rouses you out of a deep sleep, with the words, "I'm afraid there's been an accident...." It could be the doctor walking into the examination room with a furrowed brow, and saying, "I'm sorry, but it's malignant...." It could be when the boss says to you, "I'm sorry, there have been orders from the main office to cut back. We have to make some lay offs...." Or it could be God's intrusion into our comfortable and happy world.
In Matthew Jesus makes the point: "you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." We will never know when, we will never know how. We are not privy to the workings of God's plan or of God's time. The simple fact is that despite Christ's directive to prepare, we can never really be ready. Christ's coming will always be an intrusion into the ordinary things of life, the comfortable and safe things that we have gathered around us. What kind of preparation could we possibly undertake?
Isaiah and Paul both offer answers. Indeed, it is the same answer. "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!" When we are at the edge of something earthshaking, when the day of the Lord is upon us, we can already walk in God's light, even though Mount Zion is not altogether lifted up, and even though all of the nations of the world are not yet streaming to the mountain of the Lord.
In the Romans reading, Paul refers to putting "on the armor of light," remarkably similar to Isaiah's "walking in the light of the Lord." What it is really all about is living the life of Christ, living honorably, to use Paul's words. The preparation we must undertake is to live precisely that life that Christ has already called us to, to refocus our efforts, to recommit our lives.
In the Chronicles of Narnia, the good beavers are telling the children about the Christ-figure Aslan, that he is a lion and that few people can appear before him without their knees knocking. "Then he isn't safe?" asked Lucy. "Who said anything about safe?" was the response, " 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good" (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chapter 8). Safety is not what Christ comes bringing. In fact, he threatens our complacency, the sense of safety that we cling to so tightly.
Advent is a reminder that we are creatures living on the edge, that life is radically contingent, that there are vast changes and upheavals in the fabric of life and the universe. The ordinary things of life will be transformed.
Christ is coming. He may not be completely safe. But he is good.
Alternative Applications
1) Isaiah: The Advent of God's Peace: On March 26, 1979, on the lawn of the White House, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin signed the treaty of peace between Israel and Egypt. In the comments of each of those leaders, we heard the words from Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." It was an impressive and stirring moment as three religions and three nations quoted an expression of the human quest of all the millennia -- peace. But were they proposing a peace process, or a vision of the future?
The truth is that peace for Isaiah could only come about from God's hand, through our reliance on God and through our humbly submitting ourselves to God. Ultimate peace doesn't come about through disarmament, through reshaping weapons into farm implements, however noble and desirable that might be.
2) Isaiah: God's Desire for All Nations: Isaiah's vision of the age to come is a vision not just for Israel or Judah. All nations will be traveling to the mountain of God, to hear God's word and to receive God's instruction in the art of peace. No single nation or people has a private claim to God's goodness and largesse. It is for all, and all are summoned to the mountain. That same inclusiveness is the spirit of Advent -- that Christ comes not for just the few, not just for Presbyterians or Baptists or for any denomination at all.
God always seeks to expand what's included in the designation "God's people." And when Isaiah's vision comes to pass, God's people will be of all nations.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
Isaiah 2:1-5
"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains...." That prophecy is to be understood not so much in geographical terms as in terms of rank of importance. "In the latter days," in that indeterminate time in the future when God establishes his kingdom on earth, Jerusalem, situated on the mount of Zion, will be the most important place in the world. But why Jerusalem? Surely Washington, D.C., or Rome, Beijing or even Paris or Tokyo are more important than that ancient place we call the Holy City.
Jerusalem has a long history, of course. It was there that King David established his capital, binding together the traditionally divided tribes of northern and southern Israel. It was there that Solomon built the temple, with God invisibly enthroned above the outspread wings of the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. It was in Jerusalem that God promised to dwell forever in the midst of his covenant people, after he gathered them from their exile (Ezekiel 37:26-28). And yes, it was there in Jerusalem that God crowned Jesus Christ on his cross as King and Lord over all (according to the Gospels of Mark and John).
In other words, Jerusalem is not important in itself. It is important because of its connection with Almighty God, who chose to reveal himself to human beings most fully in the events that took place in that Holy City. And still, to know the one true God, it is necessary to know him through those events.
It is no wonder that in our day, there is such a struggle between Muslims and Jews in Palestine for control of Jerusalem. There the faithful believe they can approach the sanctuary of God. There Jews still can still pray at the Wailing Wall of the temple. There Muslims can still bow at the Temple Mount. And Christians can still make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, to feel in their bones the stories recounted for us in the New Testament. Human beings, through all the ages, have fought and died to seek and to know God, for apart from God, there really is no peace or meaning to human life, is there? And we desperately want to find those.
The scriptures affirm for us throughout their pages that beyond this world of struggle and turmoil, of suffering and death, there is another world called the kingdom of God, which already exists in God's heaven. And the promise of the scriptures, on which we rely in the Lord's Prayer, is that God will establish that kingdom on earth in his good time. Consequently, in our text for the morning, the eighth century B.C. prophet, Isaiah of Jerusalem, whose words are contained for us in Isaiah, chapters 1-39, lifts our eyes beyond our present struggles to see that kingdom come, as it already is in heaven.
Isaiah's is a universal vision. The good life of the kingdom, he says, will not be given just to Jews or to Muslims, to Christians or Buddhists or Hindus or anyone else (cf. Luke 13:29-30). No, proclaims Isaiah, in God's coming kingdom, every people will say in so many words, "Come, let us seek the one true God." They will invite their friends and neighbors to go with them, because they will want everyone they know to learn God's will and to walk according to his paths. They will hunger for the Word of God, because they will want to pattern their lives according to it.
That's quite a dream, isn't it, to imagine that there will come a time when every person on earth will want to do God's will instead of his or her own? When self-rule and selfish desires are a thing of the past? When no one will seek just his or her own welfare, or the good of his own country, but the good of all? When human pride and greed, power and anxiety are things of the past? But that's part of the vision of the kingdom of God that the Bible portrays for us throughout its pages -- God the Ruler over all and all persons eager for his loving rule, hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which belongs to the Lord alone. Is that what we yearn for, in this time of ours? Goodness, right living, wholeness, fullness of life?
Our text is sure that to establish such a world, God will also do some judging. Everything will be measured according to the Torah, that is, the law, the teaching of the Lord, proclaims Isaiah. That is, everything will be judged according to the measure of the order that God wishes to establish in human life. That's what torah means in our passage -- God's order. But God's judgment will be so fair, so right, so merciful, that all of warring humanity's strife will be stilled, and every nation will agree with his judgment. Out of swords, peoples throughout the world will make plowshares to till the land and to feed their populations. Out of spears, they will fashion implements with which to prune their vineyards. No nation will want to go to war any more. They will not pile up armaments or impoverish their people in order to support vast military establishments. Instead, God's righteous decisions will be accepted by all, and every nation will pattern its life according to those decisions. A passage in Micah 4:1-4 parallels this Isaiah text, and it adds a lovely picture. It says, "... they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,/and none shall make them afraid,/for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Micah 4:4).
Every year on the First Sunday in Advent, we in the church always look in two directions. We look back once more to the birth of our Savior Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea. But we also look forward to his second coming, when he will return as Lord over all to establish his kingdom throughout the earth. And the nature of that coming kingdom is at least partly described for us here in our text from Isaiah. It will be a time when all peoples will seek and know the one true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be a universal time of peace, when the turmoil of hatred and war no longer resounds throughout the lands, and so a time when no person will have to be afraid of violence. It will be a time of order, when God's good rule alone will determine relationships among human beings and with the natural world. It will be a good time, a righteous time, a time of wholeness and of abundant life. The Lord God is steadily working toward that time. And he asks each one of us to join him in that work.
PREACHING THE PSALM
Psalm 122
This psalm is one of the Songs of Ascent that pilgrims sang as they climbed the hill of Zion toward Jerusalem and the temple. The song is to express their gladness at arriving at the goal of the pilgrimage, the site of the throne of God. Jerusalem is praised as the place of refuge (v. 3, 7), a place of praise (v. 4), a place of justice (v. 5), and a place of peace (v. 7). Some preaching possibilities:
1) Here's an Advent link: Verse 2 talks of the gates of the city and verse 7 mentions the walls. These are the structures of the Holy City that symbolized for the people the hoped-for unity of the tribes and families of Israel. Within the city was the throne of David, and it was he who made the city the national capital. From his line, the "thrones of David" (v. 5), a messiah was expected who would make the symbolic unity of Israel a living reality. Thus Psalm 122 can point us toward the messianic age, and the kingdom where all peoples of earth, not merely of Israel are invited to unite.
2) The pilgrims are called to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (v. 6). Peace is more than the absence of war. It includes soundness and wholeness and well-being. The term "shalom" (which means peace) is for the psalmist a part of the very name of the Holy City. When he talks about the walls and towers of Jerusalem, he uses human language to convey divine content. In the old covenant, it was in the stone and mortar of Jerusalem that God became manifest among his people. In the new covenant, Jesus Christ is the living presence of God in our midst. Thus, we need to pray for peace within the church. Our churches and sanctuaries exist not only for our sakes, but for God's sake. What sort of specific situations in the church need our prayers for peace?
3) The pilgrims rejoiced over Jerusalem but Jesus, in Luke 19:42, wept over it. Its residence missed the opportunity for spiritual peace. Jesus is the living temple of God who supersedes Jerusalem and our churches. Our task is to tell the world that our hope, our peace, our fulfillment, is found in him.
